Ruto promises to abolish Helb, set up funding body

President William Ruto (centre) rang in the New Year at State House in Mombasa. [File, Standard]

"We commit to ensuring government-initiated in-service training, including Teacher Continuous Professional Development," he said.

Ruto also said the government intends to spend Sh15 billion to equip 70 TVET institutions to assist in the training of learners and prepare them for the labour market.

In its Education Charter, the Kenya Kwanza Alliance also pledged to complete the construction of Vocational Training Centres in each ward, as well as to ensure every constituency has a Technical Training and Vocational Educational Training Institution (TVET).

"Within the first two years, we will establish and fully equip a Tvet institution in each of the remaining 52 constituencies," the charter states.

"We will also hire tutors to look after our TVET institutions, because TVET has the best human capital that is tailored towards Science, Technical, Engineering, and Mathematics (Stem) subjects and areas that will lead us to engineering, because that is the future we seek."

Ruto said the recommendations of the Presidential Working Party will inform the government on how to streamline human capital and sharpen and solve challenges in the education sector.

"We know many universities are facing numerous challenges and significant debts as a result of the programme's length. We will focus on ensuring our universities receive adequate attention to provide quality education."

He also proposed establishing a public university and increasing the number of technical universities from three to eight across the eight regions from the current three.

Universities will be forced to focus on their comparative advantage in education.

"For example, the universities in Mombasa should have courses that focus on the blue economy while those in Turkana will focus on mining."